A new €100 million scheme aimed at creating up to 4,000 jobs in the construction sector while helping to reduce carbon emissions and home heating bills has been announced.
The national insulation programme was launched by Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources Eamon Ryan and Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government John Gormley earlier today.
Under the scheme, householders will be able to avail of a number of grants ranging from €250 to €4,000 in order to make their homes more energy efficient. The programme is open to all houses built before insulation and heating regulations were introduced in 2006.
The programme, which will be administered by Sustainable Energy Ireland, covers low income and social housing as well as private homes.
According to Minister Ryan the new measures could lead to heating bill reductions of about €700 per annum for individual households. The scheme will also mean more work for construction workers and will help to reduce carbon emission levels, the Minister claimed.
"This programme will provide a welcome boost to the economy. Central to Government spending in sustainable energy is to get the economy back on track. We need to replace the spending and lending that has contracted and re-focus our public and private investment," said Mr Ryan.
"In our current economic climate we need direction and radical thinking. This insulation programme saves energy, saves money and creates jobs. This is what our people, our homes and our economy need at this time," he added.
The Construction Industry Federation (CIF) welcomed the announcement of the scheme this afternoon.
"From an employment point of view this will create work for the very firms and crafts most severely impacted by the downturn in the industry," said CIF director-general Tom Parlon.
"The potential to create jobs doesn’t stop with today’s announcement. Our analysis shows that 900,000 houses were built before 1990 when the first building regulations were introduced and at an average spend of about €10,000 per house, this is a potential €9bn industry, which would see thousands of additional jobs created,” he added.
Fine Gael also offered its backing for the scheme but said it was concerned that most householders would have to commit to spending a lot of their own income before being able to access grant money.
"People may not be willing to commit to that investment in the current environment," said the party's energy spokesman Simon Coveney.
The Labour Party also praised the introduction of the programme but said that such a scheme should have been introduced earlier.
"The grant aid to householders is very helpful, but limited in the sense that there is no means test, so that people on very high incomes are treated the same as someone on a €20k public sector salary. This doesn't make any sense, Liz McManus, the party's energy spokeswoman.
"We could have a much bigger and better scheme if the Government had provided amore nuanced approach and more people would have been employed as a result," she added.
